


One Man Who Loves Her True

by TheWaffleBat



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Babies, Baby!Emily, F/M, Mute Corvo Attano, Pre-Canon, Young Corvo Attano, Young Jessamine Kaldwin - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-17 20:41:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17567606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWaffleBat/pseuds/TheWaffleBat
Summary: She’s beautiful, He said, gently nudging Emily’s chin with his knuckle and hardly daring to breathe when, clumsily, she reached for him and gurgled happily when she caught him. She waved Corvo’s finger triumphantly, kicking a little in victory.She’s so small. He made another sign then, brows furrowed as he concentrated;Stubborn, He decided was her name, with the way she clung to his hand and refused to let him go; affection in his every gesture.Corvo, and the first time he met his daughter.





	One Man Who Loves Her True

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Oscar Wilde's _The Dole Of The King's Daughter._

Emily Kaldwin was born in a tempest of terrifying proportion. It was strange to think that while Jessamine lay in the bed, feeling exhausted and gross and utterly drained, but there wasn’t much else to focus on with the way the storm beat against the walls of the Tower, thunder booming across the water between the sea and the river.

Some of her attendants were whispering to themselves, loud to be heard over the storm. “Bad omen,” Said one in a thick rural accent, gathering up the bloodied towels. She clucked, “Weather like this? Outsider’s warning us. Bad omen.”

“Shush,” Said another, also gathering up bloodied rags, with an uneasy glance to Jessamine. “It’s not too bad. Just a normal storm, is all.”

Thunder boomed again, lightning flashing across the sky. Jessamine would have laughed at the irony if she didn’t think her guts would have hated her for the effort. In the crib against the wall, utterly unperturbed by all the noise, Emily squirmed and mumbled; Jessamine smiled gratefully, because a few weeks too early she might have been but Emily’d had a strong set of lungs on her and Jessamine’s ears were still ringing.

Jessamine had been born in a storm, too, said her father once with a soft, sad smile on his face that was entirely incongruous against the sunny afternoon they were sat in. She’d been a loudmouthed thing trying to out-scream the howling wind, he’d told her with a fond laugh. People were milling around the beautiful gardens Euhorn had opened to them, marvelling at the flowers from all across the isles. The Outsider had eyes on her, so said all the servants, and the Outsider’s eyes on someone was always a portend of change, good or bad. Jessamine had always wondered if her mother’s death was the fulfillment of that, or if there was another calamity in store.

She called over one of the attendants lingering uneasily by the door, looking caught between leaving Jessamine to handle Emily by herself and collecting the nursemaid to help. “Fetch Corvo, would you?” Said Jessamine, struggling to sit up and allowing the attendant to help. “I should think he’d like to meet his newest charge.”

The attendant bowed, “Yes your majesty.”

Corvo did not take long to arrive once the door closed; it seemed it had barely _snicked_ shut before he was slipping inside, looking almost as bad as Jessamine felt. His hair was a snarled, tangled mass around his head, his eyes exhaustedly bruised beneath it. His clothes were rumpled and half falling off him, the buttons of his shirt popped into the wrong holes and his belt loose from their trouser loops. Jessamine would bet a lot of money that Corvo hadn’t eaten, either.

 _Jess,_ He said, though it could just as easily have been a question as he trotted to her first, stood by her side as he always was but utterly wrecked by fear, hands shaking a little in hers. _Jess,_ He said, tugging his hands loose. His face was so sweetly relieved to see her alive and awake that she half wanted to pull him down for a kiss, damn the servants watching the both of them. _Okay?_ He asked, and Jessamine knew it a question because that was what he was like - he _had_ to know everything was fine.

She took his hands again and squeezed them, his long, thick fingers rough and gentle. “I’m fine, Corvo. I won’t be up to much except sitting around looking almost as awful as I feel, but I’m alright. We both are.”

Corvo’s shoulders relaxed, and his face smoothed back out so he was Protector again, and not her husband in all but name. _Baby,_ He said, and the bird-like tilt of his made it a question. He looked to the crib; made a nervous little motion with his hands, like he stopped himself reaching for Jessamine’s for comfort.

“Baby,” She agreed, to the bemusement of the maids shuffling in with fresh clothes and eyes politely averting. “Her name’s Emily. Go say hello,” She added, pushing him towards the crib. She didn’t have the strength to move him even at the best of times - he was surprisingly like a wall sometimes - but he let her, and he stumbled and then walked over to his daughter, looking down at her.

She looked like most of the babies Jessamine had seen - small and squashed with a faint dusting of hair on her scalp, soft and fragile in a way that those older babies hadn’t been. Her skin faded a little from the flushed, angry red she'd been. She was also, undeniably, the most beautiful baby girl in the world, and Corvo looked at her and looked at her for long enough that some of the maids started to go for candlesticks with the way his face had gone shuttered, the way he’d hidden himself in the remote corners, thoughtful behind his hair, to study her; but Jessamine caught the softness in his eyes.

 _She’s beautiful,_ He said, gently nudging Emily’s chin with his knuckle and hardly daring to breathe when, clumsily, she reached for him and gurgled happily when she caught him. She waved Corvo’s finger triumphantly, kicking a little in victory. _She’s so small._ He made another sign then, brows furrowed as he concentrated; _Stubborn,_ He decided was her name, with the way she clung to his hand and refused to let him go; affection in his every gesture.

“You can pick her up, if you’d like,” Jessamine told him, continuing to ignore the maids who worriedly shook their heads at her.

They didn’t know Corvo, with the toffees in his pocket and the scars he didn’t look at, dark skin all the darker against Jessamine’s when he was sleeping warm and solid and curled around her while the wind hurled itself at the walls; or the softness just beneath his hard, harsh face, the gentle smile curving his thin lips and the affectionate _Love_ he used for her nickname behind closed doors. They only knew the shadow overhead, or hidden in hers, with flashing steel and a cruel twist of mouth, voiceless and separate because of that like a wraith from the Void; a huge, towering creature of black eyes and a smile gleaming like an assassin’s blade.

Corvo was distant from them in the way Hanson hadn’t been, and his loss still stung, perhaps would always sting, but it had eased a little in the time between his death and Corvo staring at her in horror at the thought of his bloodied soldier hands cradling something so fragile and new. Emily continued to gurgle, unperturbed by her father’s sudden stillness, and the maids continued their work but slowly, afraid of Corvo and his big hands and bigger sword gleaming from his hip.

Jessamine waved permission at him. “Go on, Corvo. Would you help him?” She added, turning to the nursemaid hovering by her bedside. Corvo looked a little numb as the nursemaid hesitantly pushed and prodded him into place, showing him how to support Emily’s head and keep her tucked safe in the crook of his elbow, supported by his arm.

Dimly, Jessamine wondered if Corvo felt the same kind of instinctive love she did for the little girl, or if it was something else entirely - a breed of the same love he had for Jessamine, deep and animal and selfless, the instinctive drive to protect regardless of the harm he was putting himself in, like he’d drown himself if it would keep them surfaced. The thoughtless way he’d hurl himself at anything even remotely threatening. Corvo stroked Emily’s cheek, softer than a whisper, and Jessamine knew - of course she knew, it was _Corvo_ \- that he did.

Emily gurgled again, but Jessamine couldn’t tell what she wanted. She _seemed_ okay - she wasn’t crying - and she clutched contentedly at Corvo’s coat, fingers curled weakly against the thick wool. He rocked her a little, unconsciously and awkwardly and it was so sweet Jessamine had to wonder if he’d ever cared for children before, if he’d once had a baby sister or brother.

“Have you taken care of babies before, Corvo?” She asked, and settled back while he thought of how to answer.

That, Jessamine decided, was one of the things she loved most about Corvo. Now matter how painful for him, no matter how personal or uncomfortable, he never stopped her asking about him in the same way he shut down other people who asked. Corvo didn’t always answer, and Jessamine thought that the reason he _was_ so lenient with her was because she didn’t press, but he didn’t stop her, or hold it against her when it was something she probably already should have known.

It _really_ ought to concern her that she knew so little about her own Protector - Burrows kept insisting that she start getting answers in the same way he’d insisted her father do the same - but she knew enough to know that Corvo was a good man, calm and quiet and surprisingly sly sometimes. Jessamine didn’t need to know where he learned Serkonan sign language, if it was in the Abbey when he was a child or later as a soldier, or all the nitty gritty details about his time in the military, or even all the things he’d done in the two years he’d served her father, first unofficially and then more legitimately.

Corvo carefully set Emily back down in her crib to free up his hands. _No,_ He told her, _Mother didn’t remarry after my father died, and my sister never had children of her own._ He paused, then, and carefully schooled himself back to the consummate professional he always was in front of people that weren’t her. _Burrows,_ He said, and Jessamine always had to stifle a giggle that Corvo’s sign for him was a burrowing rat, _Asked to see you._

And that, it seemed, was that - Corvo wasn’t going to share more of himself, not yet. Jessamine didn’t mind, because letting him keep his secrets meant he touched the back of her hand like she was one of the butterflies Jessamine had seen him find in her father’s gardens once; not wanting to touch because he didn’t want to hurt it but drawn, anyway, because he wasn’t used to beautiful insects after a childhood dodging Serkonan bloodflies.

“Go on then,” She said, holding his wrist with her fingers against his pulse, feeling his heart beating for her, “Send him in. And get some rest, dear Corvo.”

**Author's Note:**

> Can stand alone but was intended to be part of [Crow](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1183160) before I cut it because it didn't fit. Can you tell I've never really been around babies? Because I've never been around babies since I was very small.
> 
> Also, for the curious, I base all of Corvo's sign language on BSL. I don't know how to speak it but I _do_ know that speakers give each other sign names - [this](http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/features/sign_names.shtml) explains it very well. 'Jess' technically translates as 'Love', at least how I see it, while 'Stubborn' is just Emily.


End file.
